UPDATE: The second round of NAFTA renegotiation concluded today in Mexico City, Mexico. A joint statement was released:

Washington, DC – On September 5, 2017, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Secretary of the Economy Ildefonso Guajardo concluded the second round of the renegotiation and modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Mexico City, Mexico. This concluded five days of meetings by a team of subject matter experts covering various negotiation topics.

Building on the progress made in the First Round of the renegotiation and modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Mexican Secretary of the Economy Ildefonso Guajardo, today successfully concluded the Second Round of negotiations, which took place in Mexico City from September 1 – 5.

Over the past five days, more than two dozen working groups comprised of trade experts and technical officials worked diligently to advance the discussions and exchanged information and proposals. In several groups, this engagement resulted in the consolidation of proposals into a single text upon which the teams will continue to work during subsequent negotiation rounds.

Important progress was achieved in many disciplines and the Parties expect more in the coming weeks. The three countries will continue their respective processes of internal consultation in preparation for the Third Round of negotiations, which will take place in Ottawa, Canada, from September 23 – 27.

The Ministers from Mexico, the United States and Canada reaffirm their commitment to an accelerated and comprehensive negotiation, with the shared goal of concluding the process towards the end of this year.

The successful conclusion of these negotiations will update NAFTA through new rules that will generate important economic opportunities for all three countries, fostering further growth in the region for the benefit of the three NAFTA partners. (link)

Livestream of closing ministerial session of NAFTA round two with Mexico, Canada and the United States from Mexico City. Mexico first, then Canada then the U.S. will deliver remarks.

The right side hair flip distraction…stick it behind your right ear like the other side and forget-about-it. And the voice lilt at the end of every sentence…that is how one reads books to preschoolers to keep them engaged.

Eh….how to talk like a Canadian (from the perspective of an American working for a Canadian company):
1. End every 4th or 5th sentence with the very fast question “eh?”, as in “That sounds like a good plan, eh?” (And yes, even after leaving Canada 2 years ago, my ~5 years there infected me and you will still here this occasionally in my FIR reports or my own podcast.)
2. Practice a slightly different intonation of vowels and emphasis on different syllables. The oft-cited and extreme case is where “abOUT” becomes more like “abOOT”. One I run into all the time is where the American “praw-CESS” become “PRO-cess” (with stronger emphasis on first).
3. Never say “I went to college” as that implies a lower-level, more trade-type school. Say instead “I went to university” even if the school you went to was, in fact, called a College.http://northof45.livejournal.com/13709.html

I have heard these sophomoric (immature and inexperienced) comments from Americans so many times, usually said with an endearing and condescending tone of voice. Canada is linguistically complex and interesting…just as is the United States in all its regions. The speech, the music and the cultures of the vast Canadian provinces far exceeds a few distilled quirks, promoted as oddities even. Please get a grip and understand the wealth of inheritance and history that is extant in Canada.

At the start of NAFTA negotiations, Trump spoke about requiring Mexico to pay their workers a living wage. Wouldn’t that end human trafficking and raise wages here in USA?

Can you imagine those greedy multi-national corporations, herding us all like cattle to the slaughter for three decades, raking in all that blood money, having Trump force them all to reverse course, lose profits and treat all workers across the globe fairly? Now, THAT would be super-duper honest-to-goodness, across the board WINNING!!

While I think it would be terrific if wages rose in Mexico to be more in line with ours, I sort of question it when our govt demands it of them in these negotiations. Just in the past 24 hrs there was an outrage here about how the Canadian trade minister was demanding our U.S. states eliminate all right-to-work laws. Isn’t that sort of the same thing as demanding Mexico raise their wages (assume artificially like a minimum wage). Isn’t this meddling in the other nation’s internal business? Not referring to state’s rights, but questioning how far outside the actual trade matters should negotiators go. It may be done all the time but I readily admit ignorance of such matters.

The U.S. “Right to Work” laws impose absolutely no burden upon Canada. Frankly, the U.S. has every right to make demands on Mexico given that illegal immigration is a direct burden upon the U.S. taxpayer.

Like parents of an adult child who moves back home after college, the U.S. has every right to make demands on how Mexico conducts itself. If Mexico wants to be treated like an adult and be given space to run things as it sees fit, then it needs to stop mooching off the parents and take responsibility for being self-sufficient.

This “raising the wages in Mexico” might be one of those things that Trump throws out their knowing that the US needs to eventually concede on something to make the process go forward and give the other side a win. Much easier to concede on something that actually is not as important to you but is a very big deal to the other side.

I see it as the anti-human trafficking solution. Stop other governments from creating refugee crises and border crossing migrant workers. Force them through trade negotiations to treat their own people better. Just like trade is used to leverage China to denuclearize Kim Un. We are all inter-connected and anything we can do to lessen the international turmoil caused by Globalism, the better.

Mexicans suffer from a national inferiority complex, as a result of the enslavement and brutalization of the Spanish Conquistadores, and the long corruption of the ruling class. They compensate with machismoso, and a cultural demand for “respect”, which translates to “never tell me about my shortcomings or ways to improve”, and therefore, they do not really grow. There is a provincialism about the language, the culture, and the family that is impervious to real change. The Catholic influence breeds a fatalism that destroys any larger ambition in the general populace, and they do not really think about “tomorrow” very much.

COMPLETELY different culture, and the gringo is always fair game. I know, I live there much of the year.

If not, NAFTA is another promise our President is going to check off his list! I can’t wait for that day. Tom Donohue and the CoC are going to have a heart attack! Lucifer and Ben Sasse will be calling for the execution of our President. However, Americans, Canadians and Mexicans outside of the political bubble will be celebrating the decision.

The same day he signs the EO to commence the six month window, he will announce that our Killers are setting up bilateral meetings to finalize trade deals with Mexico 🇲🇽 and Canada 🇨🇦. Those deals will be finalized before the six month window closes pulling us out officially from NAFTA.

Xi and China 🇨🇳 are getting destroyed everywhere! No more using NAFTA to bypass our tariffs.

In my business class today the word NAFTA was mentioned. I couldn’t believe some of them had no clue what it was. Of course, they’re pro amnesty. I mentioned that Rosenstein had put out a memo actually telling people to stop watching the fake news. It was obvious no one knew much about what goes on in the country

Canada is clearly not serious about these negotiations; they think they’re just going to ride everyone else’s coattails and continue to scam and skim the cream off the USA economy, virtue signalling wildly all the way. It was evident as soon as they announced who their delegates were–not one a trade or economic expert or official.

Our “Killas” should just cut the Canucks out and do solid, fair deals with MX. MX is going to see new levels of improvement, as they get their skilled and USA-educated human capital back.

Meanwhile, in Canuckistan, nada. Sad! I like my Canuck friends, but they didn’t vote hard enough to MAGA with us, it seems.

Lady at church is the new Stewardship Director. Instead of asking for money directly, she told a story she thought was amazing. The only question in my mind how much giving will be down, not if. She sang a song at the end though, so she can sing, too.

The timing is great. So many policies are moving forward…all the fools in Congress can do is delay and kick the can down the road. Unfortunately, we can’t wait to MAGA! It’s now…don’t like it, move to Canada or Mexico.

Their gov’t. is just like ours. Corrupt to the core. They have drug cartels running things and owning pols. We have the COC and globalist billionaires. Results are the same. Just a different source of where the money is derived.

“MIreilleG says:
September 5, 2017 at 3:57 pm
God that Canada spokeswoman is hard to watch and harder to listen to.”

Try to imagine how difficult it is for Canada’s Conservative voters (appx 38%) to watch and listen to the Liberal Party’s PC smugness, certitude, identity politics and self professed moral and ethical superiority almost every day. If you think Ms. Freeland and Justin are difficult to watch check out the House of Commons Question Period sometime and watch the NDP leader Mulcair perform for his even farther left constituents. In Canada, Conservatives are fighting a 2 front political war and losing.

The Conservative Party just elected a new leader and Mulcair is leaving in a few months but whether it will change the political landscape in Canada is uncertain. Justin and Freeland might be around for sometime given that Canada does not have term limits for PM’s or MP’s.

notice what progressives do when they are in power ? they dont care or even want to cater to the right or to work with them. leftist dont do that.. the main reason they hated trump so much is because he fights like they do… only difference is what trump wants to do is popular with large swaths of the people

The faces of the Janus coin. Do these people even listen to themselves talk, let alone listen to the other guy(s) speaking? Good grief. This word salad makes one dizzy.

“The NAFTA negotiators, however, did not make progress on difficult subjects such as rules of origin, labor standards and changes to dispute-resolution mechanisms.”

“One area of concern identified by lobbyists is Lighthizer’s stated objective of incorporating a U.S.-specific automotive content requirement”

“Critics say it (NAFTA) has drawn jobs from the United States and Canada to Mexico, where workers are paid far lower wages. Supporters say it has created U.S. jobs and that the loss of manufacturing from the United States has more to do with China than Mexico.”

“If NAFTA collapses, costs could rise for hundreds of billions of dollars in trade as tariffs are brought back.”

How in God’s name did we survive and become the greatest nation on the face of the planet w/o NAFTA and these other trade agreements….and millions
of illegal immigrants doing jobs Americans won’t do? Must just be a coincidence that since all the aforementioned came about, we fell into the abyss.

The basic fault with NAFTA will remain ie. Two can gang up on one. Imagine that the Dems win the next or the one after, election. It will be back to square one. Because the swamp from which the regulators come from will revert to type. NAFTA needs to be done away with completely.

Our President will terminate NAFTA. Just give him sometime he is a patriot who is owned by nobody but the people not the special interests that is why both Congress and the Senate is delaying his policies but they will pay a huge price in 2018.

Seems Canadians are on really bad POT…Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to tell us what laws we can pass and force us to ‘hire unions’…right, like that’s gonna happen.

I think we need to ask for a new negotiator!…one with a brain would be nice.

I distinctly remember Ross Perot being Laughed at by Al Bore for saying this Law would create a ‘giant sucking sound’ as Jobs went to Canada and Mexico. Seems Ross had it dead on and the Democraps in charge were just padding their pockets on the sly. Time to cut this OFF!